He felt even more aloof from praise and censure alike than he had after War and Peace. Without setting foot outside Yasnaya Polyana, he had conquered Russia. Sitting at his desk in his peasant blouse, he glanced through the press clippings sent by Strakhov. One, signed W—, was especially dithyrambic: "New generations will comc, society will be transformed, Russia will turn down other paths, but these works [Wc/r and Peace and Anna Karenina] will continue to be read and reread by all because they are inseparable from Russian life and Russian culture. They will be eternally new."7
How did Tolstoy respond to these glowing prophecies? With pride, skepticism, indifference? Whatever he said, he must have been touched by the understanding and love of so many people. But for him fulfillment, true fulfillment, was not to be found in newspaper articles, however flattering they might be. He must seek it in himself. And when he looked there, he saw nothing but darkness, uncertainty and confusion.
3. Art and Faith
'l'he royalties from Anna Karenina, added to those from War and Peace, exceeded twenty thousand rubles a year; in addition, the farms were bringing in nearly ten thousand rubles.* This more than covered the family's expenses. Once again, Sonya had taken full charge of the administration of the estate, releasing her husband from all material Cares. All he had to worry about was writing.
The increase in his income led to the purchase of more land, but also to the enlargement of his domestic staff. Alongside the regulars —onetime serfs in caftan and bark shoes, dedicated to the family, with their own familiar way of addressing the masters—appeared liveried footmen (in red waistcoats and white cotton gloves), "trained" chambermaids, seamstresses, governesses, French and German tutors. Little Tanya, who at the age of fourteen was also keeping her diary, wrote on November 11, 1878: "I have a governess, Mile. Gachet, but Masha has an Englishwoman, Annie; the boys have M. Nief; Andrey has a nyanya; we also have a Russian teacher, B. A. Alexcycv; he lives in a wing of the house with his wife, his son who is one year and two months old, and his stepdaughter Lisa, aged eight. M. Nief's wife also wants to live here; he has already taken a little isba for her and his son. Other teachers come to the house; the drawing teacher, Simonenko: he is short and humpbacked. Then the Greek teacher, Ulyansky. The priest, the music teacher Michurin, the German woman Amalya Fedorovna . .
The most striking figure among this large staff of intellectuals was the Frenchman, M. Nief. "Nief" was a pseudonym, masking a certain Jules Montel, onetime supporter of the French Commune, who fled
0 Or a total (royalties and income from the estate) of $84,900.
the country after the "Vcrsaillais" had crushed the rebellion and did not reveal his true identity until 1880, when an amnesty was proclaimed in Paris. Alexeyev, the Russian teacher, was also a militant socialist. At first he was offended by the material comforts of the inhabitants of Yasnaya Polyana, but he ultimately fell under Tolstoy's spell and liked to say he was his debtor and his friend. Both tutors and pupils took part in all the family festivities. A picnic in the forest was planned for Tanya's birthday, on October 4, 1878. "M. Nief rolled up his sleeves and made an omelette and hot chocolatc," Sonya wrote in her diary. "Four fires were burning. Sergey roasted shashlik. The party was very gay, we ate a great deal and were fortunate enough to have a magnificent day."
The house had been enlarged in 1871 but the new quarters were already cramped: guests were assembling at Yasnaya Polyana with increasing frequency. The disciples had not yet begun to come, but there were relatives, friends and neighbors. According to the Russian tradition, they said they were coming for the day and stayed for a week or a month. As the nearest station was three miles away and there was no hotel in the vicinity, Sonya offered bed and board to all comers. Tolstoy was not averse to this hum of guests, servants and children. He loved to feel himself surrounded by a noisy, simple life. It was his overcoat, to shield him from cold and death. Sometimes, in his study, he heard the laughter of croquet players under the larches and the crisp taps of their mallets against the balls. But did you have the right to make merry when a trap-door was about to yawn beneath your feet? He looked at himself in the mirror. A fifty-year-old face: hair cropped short above a high furrowed brow, broad bushy eyebrows overhanging two sharp gray eyes sunk deep in their sockets, a shapeless nose, fleshy ears, a sensuous mouth, and, framing the whole, a forest of stiff, tangled graying hair, thick as wire. He had never been in better condition. In spite of his headaches, he could easily work eight hours on end. Hiking, galloping through the brush, cutting hay or sawing wood, nobody could keep pace with him. Was there any more healthy, better-balanced life in the world than his? Everything he had wanted when he was young he had obtained, and in the prime of life. He had wanted literary fame, and he shared with Dostoyevsky the honor of being universally acclaimed as the greatest living Russian author; he had hoped to spend calm years working in the home of his ancestors, surrounded by a loving wife and many children, and thanks to Sonya, he was savoring this family happiness to the full. He had dreaded being forced to write in order to earn a living, and his financial circumstances allowed him to work in total freedom.
And yet, lie was not happy. Or rather, the form of happiness that had become his lot did not content him and he wondered whether there might not be some other kind. I lis thoughts were haunted by the night at Arzamas. Sometimes he did not read a single page or write a line for days on end. Along with mental paralysis came physical indifference. An automaton went through the motions of everyday life in his place. Then, suddenly, he awoke and began to ask questions, and apathy would give way to anguish.
"I would be deep in my problems of estate management," he write in Confession, "and a question would come to me: 'All right, so you have 1350 acres of land in the government of Samara, and 300 head of horses; so what?' Or, thinking of my children's education, 1 would ask myself, 'What for?' Or, meditating upon the best way of making people happy, I would conclude, 'What docs it have to do with me?' Or again, thinking of the celebrity my books had brought me, I told myself, 'Fine, you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Molifrc, and all the writers in the world, and then what?'"
At that moment, if anyone had offered to grant his dearest wish he would not have known what to ask for; he wished for nothing. He wished for nothing because he had discovered the futility of human enterprise. He had walked along the road for fifty years, his eyes distracted by a moving leaf or a passing face, and suddenly he saw the chasm. "And you can't stop and you can't go backward and you can't close your eyes in order not to see that there is nothing ahead but the lie of freedom and happiness, nothing but suffering, real death, complete annihilation."
When he reached this point in his brooding, he thought he heard a sort of distant laughter. Someone was making fun of him, someone who had worked everything out beforehand, a long time ago.
"The someone was enjoying himself, watching how, after growing up, after cultivating my body and mind for thirty or forty years, after attaining the summit of my powers, reaching the height from which one looks out over the whole of life, there I stood like an idiot, realizing at last that there was nothing and never would be anything in life. And he thinks it's funny!"